My 1987 Birthday Party.

On February 6th, 1987, I had a birthday party. A bunch of boys from my second grade class came over to do what boys do. One of them gave me Optimus Prime socks.

That’s me, at the party.

Back then, kiddy birthday parties were usually small productions, amounting to little more than “visits with cake.”

(That’s my way to skirt guilt over having apparently spent the bulk of the party holed up in my bedroom, playing Spy Hunter on the Atari 2600. What a host I was!)

The party didn’t have any central theme. We had Transformers plates, G.I. Joe party favors, and a Carvel cake that looked like it’d been remembered literally 20 minutes before everyone got there.

Seeing that candy spread really takes me back, though I guess it shouldn’t, since my mother still trots that same Lazy Susan out whenever it’s time to celebrate.

Oh, and the potato chips? Those had to be Wise Cottage Fries. If you’ve never eaten them, sorry, you missed out on the best chips ever. So big and sturdy and salty! (And also the best chips for imitating the scene where Leia feeds Wicket.)

In this shot, two of my friends futz around with the Atari, while two other friends “give ‘em the horns.”

I’d forgotten just how big of a thing the horns were. Not a day went by that you didn’t give and/or receive the horns several times. We never knew the genesis of the tradition, but to us, giving someone the horns meant that for however long he remained with the horns, he was a stupid idiot.

(The horns turn up all over the tape.)

The party was mostly just us hanging out and doing what we normally did, but my mother did try to incorporate a few games. First was a clowny spin on Pin the Tail on the Donkey, which quickly devolved into “break balloons over the head of whichever kid is blindfolded.”

There was also bingo. The three least-aggressive kids played that, no doubt to avoid getting tangled up in what was fast becoming a house-wide wrestling match.

There’s a lot to unpack, here.

First, a shoutout to my family’s long-gone living room, with shelves built by my late father. He crammed about a billion lacquered shelves into that space, and I spent so much of my childhood staring at the expensive electronics and forbidden liquor bottles.

Next is the television, which replaced our previous set after I stuck a giant refrigerator magnet on it. In my defense, nobody warned me.

Kids took breathers at this “theater” throughout the party, with shows like Challenge of the Gobots airing in their normal weekday slots. (The party was held on Friday afternoon, right after school.)

Then there are the toys! That Inhumanoids Tendril figure from the second image replaced the one that’d been broken the previous Christmas Eve. If you’ve never understood the appeal of Inhumanoids, just check out how BIG that figure was in the hands of a second grader.

The first photo shows my #1 birthday score: The TransformersTrypticon figure, which was a giant robot dinosaur that transformed into a clunky city. (You can even see its shredded box in the background, which foretold an expeditious loss of Trypticon’s many small parts.)

Here we have one of my friends messing with a novelty slot machine and an Evil-Lyn figure. I don’t see the connection, but I’m not sure I want to, either.

More important is the glimpse of my second grade bedroom, which proves that I’ve never lied about how much I was into ALF. Between the poster on the wall and the doll by my pillow, ALF was my funny Jesus.

PS: If you’re my age or older, take note of that blanket. I bet you had one of ‘em, too. Those double-sided animal blankets were everywhere. (This one has an eagle, but I remember us owning another with a tiger theme.) They were as heavy as rugs, and great for Saturday morning mummifications.

It seems like I hadn’t yet succumbed to shyness by the second grade, but another of my longtime quirks was already on display: A complete inability to handle the birthday song. I can’t sing it, and having it sung to me feels like the doctors-in-Hell scene from Jacob’s Ladder.

I no-sold the entire song while refusing to make eye contact with anyone, and then cut it short by using a G.I. Joe party horn to kill the candles. Naturally, someone had been giving me the horns the whole time.

Thirty years later, and a lot has changed. Pepsi bottles now have different labels, and Wise Cottage Fries are things of the past.

At the same time, I’m shocked by how much has stayed the same. I still hate the birthday song, and I still more or less have the same haircut.

I was just talking to my mother about those blankets yesterday. My brother and I had clown ones. They weighed about 20 pounds each.

Nothing reminds me more of childhood than sheets and blankets. We had every character from Smurfs to He Man to Ninja Turtles. I still can’t find sheets that comfortable anymore, they use that new cotton crap that doesn’t breathe.

CMP

I, too, pray to ALF.

Cindy Auer

Happy Birthday! 🙂 My birthday is actually next week! Yippee? Anyway, I’m jealous of your Transformers party! I have a twin sister (we pretty much got the same presents in different colors if applicable) and my parents hated other peoples kids, so we never had any parties outside of immediate family (boo hiss). I make up for it by throwing my son the birthday parties I never had. haha. Last one was a dodgeball party at the Y with a zombie versus humans theme and the kids dressed the parts. I made a brain cheesecake and brain cupcakes.

I love all of Dino Drac, but these looks into Matt’s past are my absolute favorite parts. We never had a camcorder, and I look at these gifs and get so jealous that the house I grew up in was never captured so lovingly in its various states.

ChimChamChum

I’ve brought it up before in other articles comment sections, but the change from the tiny mouths to the wide mouths of 2 liter bottles was easily the best thing that has happened in the past 30 years.

Happy Birthday brother. Awesome post .I had the same ALF poster on my wall! Ahh to be a kid again. I think I only had one actual birthday party throughout my life, but having this video is an incredible memento.

Tony

I got that same ALF poster for my 8th birthday. It hung on the outside of my bedroom door until we had to move in 93-94ish. Anyway, that was also the birthday I scored my Wisecracking ALF doll. I still have him today, wearing my Rowdy Roddy Piper sweatshirt from Kindergarten.

Tracy

Happy Birthday, Matt!!!! Thank you so much for sharing more great video’s from your family vault (these are my fav). I feel the same way that you do about people singing the “Happy Birthday” song especially if you are trapped at a public restaurant where the waiters/waitresses come over and sing to you causing the entire restaurant to quit eating and look at you – so uncomfortably awkward! In my option that is worse than having family members sing to you in the privacy of your own home.

I will be joining you at club 38 in July. I hope you party 80’s style today complete with retro video games, 80’s hair band music & lots of junk food. Btw, you are not old!!!!

No birthday would be complete without these guys (they aren’t people so they don’t count with their song). Enjoy your day – you rock!

Happy Birthday Matt! What no Cookie Puss cake? I like that you just tore into that Trypticon without a care in the world. I used to wait for everyone to leave before taking stuff out of the box. Double-sided animal blankets, yes we had these. I didn’t known they were a thing.
I think I’m glad I don’t have video of me with my 80s “Knight Rider” hair. Haha!

Happy Birthday Matt!
I always love these peeks into your childhood as they all feel like a mirror universe of my own in a lot of ways. Gremlins, Ghostbusters, ALF, My Pet Monster all those things ruled my childhood and knowing others have fond memories of the same junk that I do makes the world feel a little nicer. I think all of us can use a bit of that these days.

As always, these are the best entries because it proves that we all had the same childhood. ’87 was my last year to have a large group over. Party favors that year were rubrics pyramids, which remain unsolved to this day.

And don’t feel bad about being holed up in your room. The worst party I went to involved the birthday boy’s mother insisting that he still have his afternoon nap, so they rest of us just sort of awkwardly hung around.

dwitefry

Happy Birthday man
This was genuinely lovely, I wish we still had videos of my birthdays..hm…the shame might kill me…meh, worth it to see a brand new Ace Duck and sorely missed electrical goods and carpets (out front room carpet is utter crap today).PS – Trypticon = top Transformer

Happy Birthday, Matt! I hope you are having the best day yet.
Man, I loved the way we dressed back then. Seems comfy and everyone had their own style. Well, at least their parents had their own style.
I guess you guys never listened to DIO, huh?

Stonetumbler

Back in the day a lot of two liters had the black plastic cup on the bottom. Not sure why.

Stonetumbler

This post made me realize someone is chopping onions close by. Funny how kids parties are about the same no matter where you live. On a technical note, what do you use to put the videos on your computer and make the gifs?

tbone2278

Happy birthday, Matt.

As I see many other people saying, this looks almost identical to the birthday parties of my youth. Everything from the Carvel cake, to the “Pin The Tail On the Donkey” game, to the kids huddled around the TV playing video games absolutely screams of one of my childhood birthday parties. We even had a house-wide wrestling match at one of my parties which resulted in one of my friends breaking an arm.

As horrifying as that sounds it actually has a happy ending. When my friend went to the doctor to get his broken arm examined they actually found that he had a cancerous tumor growing in the area of the arm that broke (which is why that area broke so easily). It was found early enough that it did not have the chance to spread to any other parts of his body. So basically horsing around at my birthday party could have potentially saved his life.

SomeoneElse

I have an animal blanket as well (Fox-themed). I don’t think I ever had a birthday party at my house. Usually it was somewhere else (like the local McDonald’s).

Emily

Happy birthday, Matt! My birthday was last month and I just turned 37. I know we aren’t that far apart. Thanks for sharing the birthday video from your childhood! I had similar at home parties but with mismatched My Little Pony plates and Care Bear napkins. I also had one of those fuzzy animal blankets. Mine was in shades of white and navy blue and featured a unicorn. It was every bit as awesome as it sounds.

JokersNuts

Happy Birthday, Matt!! This article was perfect, thank you for sharing it with us. Reminds me a lot of my old Birthday’s and get togethers as a kid in the 80’s.

~SpikeIsMine~

Happy birthday Matt! My birthday is also in the winter, parties can be hard that time of year if there is 4 feet of snow and it’s 15 degrees out. It looks like your mom really tried to go all out for you and your friends. Thanks for sharing the photos and videos, what a blessing to have things on video to go back and re-live the good times.

Winter B.D.’s are rough ,man, at least that was my memories of them.one phenomenon of having a January/February birthday was that the stores had nothing in them after Christmas,just things you already had or things that nobody wanted.It was tricky protocol when 6 people got you the same thing.What do you say? my mom taught me to say “Its the thought that counts”.I also remember one B.D during an ice storm and the power was out for most of the day and the party was canceled because everybody had the flu.Worst yet, my brother’s B.D. was the FREAKIN FOURTH OF JULY!!! Pool party, barbecue, fireworks,softball, volleyball,frisbee…winter B.D.’s are a humbug I say!Good Day!!!

Eric Bellavance

I wish you the happiest of Birthdays Matt!!! I had one of those blankets I think. I couldn’t tell by the color in the video but was it brown and like a tan-ish color? I believe I had one with a wolf. All of my birthday parties like this were spent at the movies and the Pizza Hut. We saw the first turtles movie, Suburban Commando, Batman, and Trespass (we were newly into rap at the time) lol. I wish my home movies like this lasted. Unfortunately I learned you can tape cartoons over last years Christmas gathering at an early age.

Madra Rua

Happy Birthday Matt! I hope it’s a great one!

God these clips just *scream* 80s! And I think we had the tiger blanket you spoke of, haha. I miss these kinds of birthday parties. They’re always too extravagant these days. It was nice to have people over and just goof around for a few hours and call it a party. Kids these days are missing out.

The Real Mike

Happy Birthday, good sir. This is exactly how we treat every birthday for the 9000 kids in our family. I guess kickass parties like our early ones just became so ingrained in our minds that we just can’t party any other way. My son just had a birthday that was Jurassic World and pajama themed. It was nuts, to say the least.

JimbobJones

You think winter birthday’s were tough? Try having one on June 30! Close enough to the 4th that damn near everyone is out of town or busy. Far enough from school’s closing that no one outside of your close friends even remembers you have a birthday, despite you handing out invites the last week of school (and, back in those days, parents didn’t kill themselves to call parents like we do for my daughter today)

And this one looks pretty cool, too. Never heard of Wise Cottage Chips, but you’ve got me jealous of you for that now. =)

Trypticon? Awesome! Did you have Metroplex, too? The two are always pitched as rivals, but I only had the latter, and never knew anyone with both to make them throw down as our society dictates.

Spy Hunter on Atari 2600? Interesting, given the year. Were you just into retro before the rest of us were? 😉

I kind of know what you mean about hosting these kinds of things. It’s like, I was an introvert, and I could handle these people one or two-on-one, but get a whole bunch of them together (who might otherwise never meet under normal circumstances), and it just felt weird and maybe kind of overwhelming — especially if they manage to pair off without you. XP

Happy Birthday! Parties can be hard for introverts, but at least it looks as if your parents had the good sense not to invite the whole class. That makes it easier. A lot of people at my school would just invite everybody so nobody would feel left out, and those parties were way overwhelming. I usually didn’t have a party at all– nobody in my family was up for that kind of craziness.

I did bring cupcakes to school for my birthday once, and the container had a really hard-to-open lid. I managed to dump the whole thing on the floor. That did not help my popularity. So if you feel too bad about your hosting skills, that party was a roaring success in comparison to my inability to even hand out some damn cupcakes.

BrianF

The grass is always greener,man.My bro’s birthday was just plain more fun.During my teen years, my folks would let me chose a friend or two and they’d take us to the mall, have some grub at the food court,and treat us to a movie.That was more my speed.

Yeah, I can sympathize. I remember my mother telling me stores were “doing inventory” after Christmas, and that’s why there wasn’t much available. She worked retail, so I assume she knew what she was talking about, but at the time I never really evaluated the statement. In retrospect, I assume she meant that because it was after Christmas but before the spring/summer season, they were more focused on clearing everything out than stocking new items. So if stuff was already gone… gone it remained.

The Manimal

Came on here to wish you a happy b-day….turns out you beat me to it somehow.

The all-black look with the sweater was very Madd Matt of you. Happy Birthday!

SicilianCyclops

Yeah, what the fuck was up with the horns? And how come giving them to your friends in pictures isn’t a thing anymore?

Max Tailchaser

A Very Happy Birthday to you Matt. Since you shared a great memory let me share one of mine.
My fifth birthday party was held at the Ground Round restaurant. It was 1976 and I had just discovered KISS. Yeah, my mother was in and out of the record shop and I took one look at the Destroyer album in Midland Records and was hooked. Now my birthday is a week before Christmas so it wasn’t easy getting my schoolmates to show up. (Same S*** happens today 40 years later but I digress) But…they managed to get a handful as well as a smattering of my cousins. We took over several long tables and the festivities began. I don’t know how my parents managed it but it was a KISS themed party. What the parents of my guests and Ground Round employees thought is lost to the mists of history. I had a KISS cake featuring my favorites members Gene and Ace. The clown ::shudders:: that arrived was given orders to do a Gene Simmons make up job on me. Perk of being the birthday boy. I remember getting KISS t shirts, the Hotter than Hell & Dressed to Kill albums and a bunch other stuff that I didn’t appreciate. Alas the party came to an end but I was a very happy kid. None of the photos taken survive. Most lost in a flood that destroyed my basement others were simply not developed as my mother had a habit of throwing film into a drawer and forgetting about it.

Doctor_Who

Happy birthday, Matt!

You actually look shockingly like you did as a kid. Or at least Madd Matt does.

C Wells

Happy birthday, Matt!

God, those blankets. I got one when I was about four–so 1985–with two horses running in front of a sunset. It’s still on my bed right now. I will never find a better blanket. My brother got one at the same time that was a tiger “skin”, but his disintegrated from wear around 2000 (mine only has one foot-long stretch of the border that’s come loose.) I found a third one with tiger cubs at a thrift store last year, and it amazingly still had its fabric tag.

If anyone misses theirs and wants to know what to search: Safari Weavers.

Scott

Happy Birthday!

leech

this is almost as amazing as your christmas eve 1986 article.hope you have great day and thanks for everything.

I love articles like this so much. You know. I think we take for granted video cameras and cameras in general. So much to capture and it sometimes lasts for years. I came to the realization that without school yearbooks we probably wouldn’t know what we looked like around the age of 6-18. Not that that’s always welcome, but still. lol

Anyway. I never really liked having birthday parties as a kid. I have a big family and at the time I hated socializing with people as a whole. Still do, but not to the same degree. I think I prefer simple birthdays out or at home with just my immediate family.

As far as themed parties go. I had a few. I had two Pokemon themed cakes for my 10th birthday. One must have been an attempt at Viridian forest, while the other had Pikachu on it. Both featured Pikachu and Charmander figure cake toppers. Definitely my favorite themed birthday (We had Pokemon cups, plates, and napkins.) was my 10th. Fave cake as a teen was probably my 16th. It was an ice cream cake with the Superman logo on it. Super Sweet 16. 😉 Fave cake as an adult is probably just a plain yellow cake with chocolate icing and nothing else on it. I think for my 20th birthday my mom made a chocolate cake with marshmallow filling and it was awesome.

Lastly. Going back to what I said about video cameras. They’re a very welcome invention. I have a video camera and have been trying to come up with things to film. Usually they’re random videos without much of a theme. Maybe I’ll film my local anime con this year! That would be different. 🙂

Will Schweitzer

Happy birthday, Matt. Toasting an Ecto Cooler juice box to you.

Terry

Happy Birthday, Matt.

This was a great article. They work so well because most of us can really relate.

SHAEGGY

Happy birthday, Matt! I hope you were able the squeeze the most out of today…And document it for a 2037 DD feature.

Em Kay

Happy birthday! I was literally just looking at your tribute to this party on X-E last week. (Yeah, I still go there to click around sometimes.) I don’t know why I can’t get enough of looking at other peoples’ old photos/home movies/etc, but I can’t. The background stuff is always so interesting. THOSE PEPSI BOTTLES. THAT ALF POSTER. Sweet wood paneling, too. Ah, the 80s.

I had two birthday parties in my life. Educational ones at the natural history museum. In hindsight, I may have been the only one who had fun, but whatever, it was my damn day. I wish those were acceptable to book for an adult party. I never had one of those “invite kids in to ruin your home” parties – probably because our apartment was tiny. The only guests at my parties were my parents, my mom’s parents and the only lady who lived downstairs. I’m guessing those were pity invites on my parents’ behalf since she seemed pretty lonely.

(I was just reminded that my grandparents threw me a belated birthday party at McDonald’s once; I was probably five. A kid puked on the burger-shaped merry-go-round, and in hindsight I have no idea where my grandparents found children to attend said party, because I knew no one in that area.)

Em Kay

I never had one, but after searching, I NEED one. AT LEAST one.

Em Kay

A five year old having a KISS party? That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m sad to hear that no pictures survived.

My mother’s birthday is the 19th of December and she feels your pain. She waits to open all her presents until Christmas, BUT I’m not allowed to get her “joint” presents anyway. It’s a matter of principle after getting screwed on presents for her entire life.

Em Kay

I now know what my upcoming 34th birthday’s theme will be.

Em Kay

I totally forgot I had a McDonald’s party until I read this. A kid puked on the burger-shaped merry-go-round.

BatmanJesus

Happy birthday, Matt. As someone who is somewhat older than you but not *too much* older than you, your party rings a lot of bells. Expert my birthdays were in the summer. In Texas. In a pool. And, as i was terrified of swimming, i sat off to the side while my friends had fun. Ah well.

Teddy Ray

Parenting: you’re doing it right.

Ron Avis

Just about every one of my shirts in 1987 looked like the one worn by the kid giving you horns in the last picture. Both our parents clearly hated us. Happy birthday, sir.

Spectre

Happy Birthday, Matt. I just Had my 38th birthday 8 days ago. I think this explains why I can relate to so much of your site.

starwenn

First of all, Happy birthday, Matt! I’m the same age as you, but I have to wait two months for mine. Hope you enjoyed it, with lots of fun toys and Star Wars art books.

I still have one of those blankets. It has a deer theme. It’s on my bed now, layered between the really thick fuzzy red-violet blanket and the pale blue and tan comforter. My apartment gets drafty, and I really like to stay warm in bed.

I don’t remember often having birthday parties at home. We usually had them at some pizza parlor or arcade in the area. The most memorable would have been I think my 10th birthday. We had it in a private room in a fairly fancy seafood restaurant on the border of Cape May. Which might not have been a good idea. It was a joint party – my sister’s birthday is a week before mine, but I’m a year older than she is. Most of the kids there were her buddies. I think I had maybe two friends there. Anyway, there was a lot of spilling glasses and knocking over food and kids doing kid things…and then my stepfather started a straw-paper-blowing war, which launched long white papers and spitballs all over the room. It was years before that restaurant would take another party, and I don’t think they’ve ever done anything for kids again.

Not being terribly popular, I didn’t go to too many myself. When I did go, I’d usually end up either being the kid with the slot machine who would rather play with everyone else’s toys than the kids.

FlixtheCat

Happy Birthday Matt! I am turning 34 in August, and we used to have parties like this when I was young, except I had a big He-Man fixation for a few years there, and all the kids played with TMNT toys, and COPS action figures.

It’s so weird because now I feel like we archive EVERYTHING. I mean I can’t even remember the last “real” thing I did that I didn’t put on Instagram. Now I’m just kicking myself for not doing a better job of snapping photos and shooting videos back when it mattered more.

I can’t remember the specifics of how we invited who we invited for this party, but I know in the 4th or 5th grade I had another party (my last of this sort) at a NJ arcade. For that one, we just invited all of the boys from class.

I do remember that the invites thing was a hot button issue, though, which is why we invited ALL the boys — no room for guilt. I had female friends we could’ve invited, but I didn’t know how to invite the 2 I really knew and ignore the other 5 I only sorta knew. Kid politics!

Happy birthday Matt! We still have some of those blankets (a tiger one, and an eagle). I think we had a lion one my dad gave us too but I might have given it to my sister because I have no idea what happened to it. We also currently have a panther one on our bed.

Happy (late) birthday, Matt! Always an odd treat to get these glimpses into your past.

Stuff like this always makes me conflicted in that I don’t have much photographic evidence of my life. On the one hand it’s sad to not having something to reminisce over, but at the same time it prevents so much potential embarrassment.

Major props to your dad for keeping the booze right next to the TV. Makes my army of bottles hidden behind the rice cooker seem like a joke.

Jobee818

I have home movies of my 8th birthday party from 1987 as well. You see my uncle literally carry me out of the house to my backyard so everyone can sing to me. I hated that so much. Cottage chips were the ones that came in a metal tin or were those Charles chips? I think I remember seeing them in an old photo. I need to look for it.

Mr. Boogedy

These types of posts are my favorites. You get the 80’s kid throwback factor and the personal touch of Matt that gives us a completely authentic look back into the life of our favorite nostalgia blogger! 😀 Oh and talk about getting a hella huge case of the late 80’s feels, I literally had that EXACT SAME Alf poster on my bedroom door as a kid! 😀 (Right above a Crocodile Dundee one I might add. 😛 ) And it left such a mark on me that years later I bought one off of Ebay to put in the exact same spot in my current bedroom where it stayed for years until the great flood of 2016 here in Louisiana destroyed it along with the rest of my earthly belongings. (Sigh)

Teddy Ray

Happy slightly belated birthday, Matt! I hope you had a great day!

Thank you for sharing this glimpse into your childhood with us. I wish I had documentation of my childhood birthday parties. I didn’t have many…I only remember two, really. One was at McDonald’s. I don’t remember how old I was for that one, but the other one I remember was when I was in middle school. My parents rented the community center and it was pretty much just my family and some kids from school that I invited. It was kind of a mess because my birthday is in November, always close to Thanksgiving (sometimes actually ON Thanksgiving) and the town where we rented the building was having some kind of…I don’t know, a festival or something. When we got to the building, it was unlocked, which was weird. Not long after we got there to set up, this lady showed up with a dance troupe or something. Apparently, they were performing in the festival and had rented the building the night before and left it unlocked so they could come back the next night to do…whatever they were going to do. Once they realized we were having a party, the lady tried to get me to let them stay, playing up the fact that they were girls. But I wasn’t having it. I had my invited girls to have awkward moments with, I didn’t need any more. Oh, and also, some drunk guy stumbled in and made a beeline for the food, only to be run off by my grandmother. Precious memories, I tell you.

I know several people who don’t like being sung to on their birthday, especially in a restaurant. I remember going to Olive Garden for a friend’s birthday once and someone told the waitress it was his birthday. He picked up his knife off the table, brandished it at the waitress, and said, “You sing to me, you get cut.” They did not sing to him. 🙂

Chris Striegel/@ChrisIsHCFest

Happy birthday Matt, thanks for all you do for us.

I just want to first state that I love the happy ending with Tendril, I got really bummed out reading that xmas post. Also, Tendril AND Trypticon…man, that is some serious villainy. Earth is DOOMED.

I will forever love those Pepsi bottles. That short window of time where Throwback was a thing and we had them again for awhile was a very happy time for me.

Ooh, I forgot about that review — or I thought you got it later, I forget which. Either way, I should rewatch that. So you had him throw down with Trypticon, then, yes? =D

And hey, no shame in going for Atari — that was probably still the better-known brand by this point. Wasn’t until the end of ’88 that I became fully aware of what a “Nintendo” is, or who this “Mario” guy was. Before then, video games to me were Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man and Pole Position, maybe occasionally that Star Wars one I was never any good at. 😉

Christian

Happy Birthday man, this was great way to celebrate it. I know i have a birthday tape like that my dad taped for me and my bro. The funny part about the tape is that my dad does a small interview with all the kids at the party, lol.

Happy belated Matt! You have now totally inspired me to go make gifs of old VHS tapes from my childhood!

RyanG

Happy Birthday. It’s funny how these old memories start to mean more and more as we get older. Thanks for all you do with this site.

JudgeInjury

Surprised you didn’t have a shape cake (Hogan/Vader) that was huge during this time, maybe another one you parties? That Giants shirt on your friend was pretty current, they had just won the Super Bowl about 12 days prior so good times in you neck of the woods for sure 🙂

Happy slightly belated birthday Matt! Those are some great clips of your old party! I miss those simple invite your friends over for a birthday kinda parties we could do as kids.

Nerak

I turned 37 on 1.27, no wonder I love you and your site so much. Aquarius’ unite! Happy (one day late) Birthday!

Eric Bellavance

So they stand up better in the fridge? Thats what I always thought anyways.

TheJazzyOne

I always thought it was pretty awesome how much you seemed to have been into the same stuff I was growing up. I assumed we were about the same age. I didn’t realize that I was only 1 day older than you. That probably explains a lot. Happy birthday!

Melissa Yowhan

This is great on every level. I think my favorite part about it, though is the couches/furniture/decor from that time. Because we had couches that looked just like that.

Smeg

I rocked that same ALF poster, plus a second one from his 1988 presidential campaign which strangely made a point of his Melmacian origin.

Brew Berry

Happy late birthday wishes! Grabbing a slice of cake and then sneaking off to play Spy Hunter all day long sounds like a great birthday party idea, actually, made even better by being old enough to add alcohol to the plan. I’m totally stealing that one.

When you mention your “old house” and “long gone living room”, does that mean your childhood home isn’t in the family anymore?
Neither of the homes I grew up in— my parents’ first big house they built when my dad got a good job, and my grandparents’–are in our family anymore. I am sure this happens to plemty of folks but it’s depressing never being able to see your old room again.
Thank you for sharing this treasure. You went through some years with a “different” look in the x-e years, and yeah,now you seem pretty much a bigger version of Little Matt. Funny how that works out sometimes..:)

I remember those Transformers birthday plates/hats very well. I assume it was my birthday this same year or earlier

Anthony Soto

I really love these “home video” posts of yours, Matt. Not only are they incredibly nostalgic for us 80s/early 90s kids, but they also give us a glimpse of the man who would grow up to create X-Entertainment and Dino Drac. In a way, it almost seems strangely fated that you would go on to document the childhood obsessions of our generation. I’m certainly glad you went down that path, because having “Happy Birthday” sung to you being on par with the “demon doctors” scene in “Jacob’s Ladder” is a comparison I never knew I needed til this day:)
So, happy (late) birthday to you Matt. I pray for many more to come;)

P.S. – I also miss the old Pepsi labels.

Candy

Adorable. I never had friends over on my birthday because a) A wealthier kid’s birthday was the day after mine and the weekend always belonged to him. And b) I had no friends.
While I’m just a tick too young to remember Alf being that memorable, I did receive an Alf puppet on my 4th birthday.
Also, I had the unicorn blanket.

Jason

Had a bear one I ended up giving to my baby niece, then a flying geese one I had all thru college at least. Early 90s college, everyone had one. I’ve been in Florida for a decade and a half now, so not sure when they suddenly went out of fashion.

My family had that very same slot machine. It’s still in my mothers house.

Bradley

I was born in 1987, myself. I always love these kinds of articles, though, because while I came a little late to appreciate all of this kinds of stuff, I was still around for some of it, so it’s like “oh shit I remember that from grandma’s house/Uncle Ricky’s” etc. thanks for sharing, Matt. Also you used to look almost the same but smaller.

ReinEngel

I was born Feb. 18th, ’84 and had many of these parties. I don’t know, man… the sun just seemed to shine brighter back then.

DJManiak

I grew up with a VERY similar living room set.

SeekerLancer

Pictures and videos of your childhood always fill me with such unbelievable nostalgia. And Spy Hunter is pretty rad.